Optical phased arrays are an important, continuously growing technological field owing to the continued interest in pointing and steering optical beams. Applications utilizing beam steering range from free-space optical communications (FSOC) to light detection and ranging (LiDAR).
The performance of optical phased arrays is currently limited by a couple of factors. The first limitation is how closely packed emitters within an optical phased array can be placed without introducing optical cross-talk. The second limitation is that the overall steering range of the optical phased array is governed by the beam divergence at the individual emitter level.
Accordingly, there is a need to address the above limitations in order to improve the performance of optical phased arrays.